Social workers communicate with babies, children and young people as a routine part of their work, but the details of how they do this is often hidden from view. It is hidden because it takes place in home visits or other venues where the social worker often spends time one-to-one with the child. It is also hidden because social work records will only reveal key facts such as whether a child was seen and if they shared important new information.
Sadly, one way in which social worker-child communication is made visible is when the child was not properly heard or seen. We read about this in many reviews of child deaths or serious injuries.
One of CASCADE’s first research projects, over a decade ago, was The TLC project (Talking and Listening to Children). It aimed to learn more about everyday social worker-child communications. It uncovered the ways in which social workers often used advanced skills to enable children to share their experiences, feelings and wishes.
Social workers across the UK
The main part of the project involved researchers observing social workers communicating with children in all four nations of the UK. In total 82 social worker-child interactions were observed, with 126 children, ranging from 10 minutes to over 3 hours. Just over half took place in the home, while others were out and about in the community, or in schools, social services offices, a room in a library, a hospital ward or a secure setting. The age range was from babies to teens. Some were meeting for the first time, while others were already known to each other. In about half of these visits, the child was seen alone.
What skills were observed?
Making connections
Social workers were seen to connect with children both verbally and non-verbally, moving between everyday topics and more serious matters. Connections could be made by talking about a shared memory, or through play. One social worker, visiting a child in school alongside a police officer, was seen to whip off his shoes and show his ‘Mr Happy’ and ‘Mr Sad’ socks, asking the shy child to point to which one they felt at that moment. The child laughed, and pointed, then started to chat.
Moving with the child
Social workers were seen to move with a child, both verbally (following their lead in conversation) and physically (for example, pausing to play hide-and-seek and on the way to being shown the child’s bedroom). One social worker was observed to get on the floor with a baby and mirror their movements, while speaking directly to them.
Using play and communication tools
Social workers used a range of methods. These included drawing and writing, craft and Lego, as well as specially adapted tools. These were used in two ways. They were sometimes directly linked to listening and learning about the child’s views, for example drawing a genogram together. They were also used to create rapport and enable conversation to take place more naturally, while playing or doing an activity together.
It was clear that much of the communication was pre-planned and tailored to the individual child’s preferences and needs. If they hadn’t met them before (as in the case of the My Men socks) they had anticipated how the child may be supported to communicate in a potentially stressful situation.
The research team noticed that most social workers went about much of this work unnoticed, because they did not record the quality of their communications, only the basic content or simply that the child was seen.
Barriers
Social workers often had to source their own materials. Many team rooms lacked even colouring pens and paper. More fundamentally, some struggled to use any communication methods beyond talking suggesting a confidence and skills gap, potentially due to a lack of training, encouragement or experience.
Where can social workers and students learn more?
The project has its own web-page: Talking and Listening to Children
Here you can find a free online module with videos of social workers communicating with children and reflecting on this. The module covers four areas: Getting the Mindset Right, Creating the Space, Communicating with a Purpose and Making Good Endings.
Further reading:
This blog summarises the following open access paper in the British Journal of Social Work: Karen Winter, Viviene Cree, Sophie Hallett, Mark Hadfield, Gillian Ruch, Fiona Morrison, Sally Holland, ‘Exploring Communication between Social Workers, Children and Young People’, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 47, Issue 5, July 2017, Pages 1427–1444, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcw083.
Project details:
The Talking and Listening to Children project was funded by the ESRC. The Principal Investigators were Professor Sally Holland (CASCADE, Cardiff University) (up to April 2015), then Professor Gillian Ruch (from May 2015). Co-Investigators were Professor Karen winter (Queens University Belfast) and Professor Vivienne Cree (Edinburgh University) and Professor Mark Hadfield (Cardiff University). Project researchers were Dr Fiona Morrison (Edinburgh University) and Dr Sophie Hallett (Cardiff University).